Remember, Monday 2 May is the deadline for sending 150-word letters on "intelligent design, evolution, and their proper places in school curricula" to opinion@startribune.com. One other subject I think would be good to mention is the role of the media in this issue: the Discovery Institute has been playing the media like a violin as they gin up this phony controversy. Maybe we should be pestering them to include more science articles, and maybe make good science a regular feature. They've got a regular "Faith & Values" section, and a "Technology" section (which seems to be stuff like video games and business interests), but science is something that just slips in incidentally.

I think it can be said in a positive way, too. It's very good that their staff writer was clearly on the side of science—let's encourage more like that!

A few people have asked if having an op-ed in the Star Tribune sent more traffic my way. The answer is no, not noticeably. Actually, I'm seeing far more traffic right now from people searching for "exploding toads" than I saw from the Star Tribune. The one thing I have got is a lot more e-mail, and if you're one of the people who sent me a personal note, I'm sorry if I haven't gotten back to you. It was a regular deluge for a while, a flood that is dying down just now. I'm hoping to wade into it soon, but it's also nearing the end of the semester, and other factors are swamping me right now.

One interesting thing: it was almost all positive, by about 50:1. There were a lot of people cheering that the Strib had published stuff so clearly against the wingnut nonsense of Intelligent Design creationism, something the publishers might want to think about. There's a market waiting to be tapped!

The negative letters were few and far between, and mostly a) incoherent rantage, b) promises to pray for me, and c) utter weirdness. The funniest was some guy who went on at length about some rock formation off the coast of Okinawa which, to his mind, constitutes absolute proof that the earth is young. He also accused me of cowardice for hiding behind a website, which makes about as much sense as his claims about underwater pyramids. He says I'm supposed to come out from behind it and battle Hovind and Brown.

Hey! Pharyngula seems to have had its millionth visitor sometime yesterday! You're all sick, sick people—who would have thought rotting cockroaches and worm gonads and vile little creationists and suchlike peculiar offal would have had any popularity at all?